There are luminaires and their control devices available that are provided with preprogrammed automated control functions that aim to make such luminaires suitable for a particular use in an environment of particular characteristics. Examples of such automated control functions include switching the lights on or off or controlling the light intensity level in response to information obtained from a sensor or from a timer. Quite obviously automated control functions typically applicable for a luminaire intended for indoor are quite different from those applicable for a luminaire intended for outdoor use. Similarly, automated control functions typically applicable for domestic use are likely different from those applicable to industrial use or to use in public buildings. Hence, different usage environments call for differently configured preprogrammed automated control functions.
However, although tailored to a particular use to some extent, such luminaires and their control devices are nevertheless limited in their operation to ‘standard’ solutions that aim to account for typical characteristics of the usage environment of the intended use, and therefore in many cases they fail to properly match the characteristics of their actual usage environment.
Enabling preprogramming of the automated control functions e.g. upon installation of the luminaire facilitates adapting a luminaires to account for particular requirements and/or characteristics of their usage environment to some extent. While such luminaires may enable improved flexibility in adaptation to a specific usage environment in comparison to luminaires preprogram as part of the manufacturing process, the preprogramming upon installation still necessarily remains as a step that can only prepare for assumed characteristics of the usage environment, and consequently in many cases the actually encountered characteristics of the usage environment remain unaccounted for. Furthermore, manual configuration of the luminaire may be a complex or inconvenient task that is prone to misconfiguration—and that is anyway unable to react to any subsequent changes in characteristics of the usage environment.